Backup plan for education law

Six months after President Barack Obama called on Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law by the start of the school year, the administration is preparing a backup plan that would give states regulatory relief from some of the law’s provisions if Congress does not act.

“We want to start to explore how we would move forward if Congress doesn’t produce a bill,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who called the continued burden of regulation under the current law a “slow-motion train wreck.”

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“The best way to fix the law is through the bipartisan process that addresses everything,” he continued, but he added, “We need to make these changes on real people’s time not on Washington’s time.”

The program would exchange regulatory relief, likely in the form of waivers to states, in exchange for significant reforms, Duncan said. It would be modeled after Race to the Top, the competitive grant program that the administration has credited with spurring education reforms across the country.

Members of Congress on Friday responded to the news, which was embargoed until Sunday, with a mixture of skepticism and cautious optimism.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, emphasized that it is Congress’s responsibility to reauthorize the legislation, and he believes the Senate is still making “good progress” toward completing a bill.

“Given the bipartisan commitment in Congress to fixing No Child Left Behind, it seems premature at this point to take steps outside the legislative process that would address NCLB’s problems in a temporary and piecemeal way,” Harkin said in a statement.

But Harkin has been unable to produce legislation by at least two of his own publicly set deadlines: the Easter holiday and Memorial Day.

Others say that the process appears to be stalled and that the “big issues” — such as how the federal government should measure, reward, and sanction districts for educational outcomes — have not been agreed on.

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, one of the lead Republicans in the Senate negotiating the terms of a reauthorization bill, indicated support for Duncan’s intent to issue waivers, an acknowledgment that the legislative process in both chambers may not yield legislation by the end of summer.